Tax cap makes cutting special education costs an urgent task

Patti Sapone/The Star-LedgerThe Center for Lifelong Learning, which opened last fall in Sayreville, represents a move away from private special-education schools to more cost-effective public special-education schools.

When one autistic child moves into your neighborhood, suddenly, an extra $100,000 a year may have to be squeezed out of the school budget.

Districts aren’t permitted to cut special services just because they’re expensive. That would be discriminatory. So in tough fiscal times, the money often comes out of general programs that serve many more students.

Some legislators, including Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, want to carve an exemption into the property tax cap for unexpected special education costs that exceed $40,000.

But it won’t happen. Gov. Chris Christie has refused to make that change, and has veto power to back that up. So the focus should be on containing costs. And legislative hearings must be held to figure out how.

Reform is clearly needed. New Jersey has the fourth-highest rate in the nation of classifying students as disabled, which may be an unintended result of how funding is distributed. When guidance counselors or tutors get cut, sometimes the only place to find support for struggling kids is in “special ed.”

New Jersey also sends three times the national average of special-needs children to pricey, out-of-district schools. Our overreliance on these schools, mostly private, dates back to when New Jersey was ahead of the curve in offering special education services, but developed them in segregated settings.

More of these students should now be returned to their districts. Not only is this cheaper, but it would also place them in a more mainstream environment.

Take the district of Paramus, which provides its own services to students who are autistic or have multiple handicaps. Two families, each with two autistic children, recently moved in. But then their paths diverged. One family’s children were already enrolled in an out-of-district school, for which Paramus now pays $100,000 per child for busing and tuition. For the second family, the district will pay less than half that amount when the children enroll in an established, in-district program providing similar services.

That’s where our state should be headed. The burden of proof must be placed back on parents, if they’re the ones challenging a placement, to demonstrate their children require services that can’t be provided in-district.

And districts, especially smaller ones, need enough incentives to override the start-up costs and hassle of developing their own programs and partnerships. In the meantime, the state should take further steps to regulate tuition at private schools, which depend on public school students for their enrollment.

Out-of-district programs are time-tested and well-known, but in the long run, it’s the in-district programs that are worth our investment. And with the new tax cap, the need to reform is urgent.